PRAISE-THEM

this post goes out to all my babies out there who have a hard time accepting themselves because they aren’t conventionally beautiful. who have chubby arms or legs or tummies & feel bad because society doesn’t praise them for it like they do for other body types. i have a tummy, stretch marks, and cellulite. it’s taken me years to come this far, as to love me for me & i hope you all can reach a point where you’re comfortable in your own skin. xoxo ily
( haramshawty & liquidglue convinced me to post this)

If someone says “God bless” or “praying for you” or “God is amazing” (in response to someone’s healing or something) and your reaction is to post some incredibly douchey, stuck-up, nasty comment about how “God doesn’t exist” or “actually MEDICAL SCIENCE is amazing, ur God is made-up bs”

I’ve called the bank, which, adorably, praised me for catching them so quickly and calling in immediately (like I was gonna wait? Sam’s rent gotta be paid, yo, these guys pulled $1400 out of my bank account). They’ve cancelled the payments, probably in time to stop the goods even being shipped, but of course they had to close my debit card and are sending me a new one, which means it’s time to do the Dance Of Changing My Card Number On Every Website Where I Shop.

Having been an early devotee of AJ Raffles, Jim DiGriz, and the various rogues of O. Henry, I don’t begrudge whoever managed to get my card and buy themselves a hundred bucks’ worth of American Eagle merchandise, a Roomba, and what I can only presume is a new laptop, even if I deplore their taste in clothing. I do wish there was a way to spare myself the annoyance of having to memorize a new debit card number, though. I’d just managed to get the old one into my muscle memory.

Protip, kids: if your bank has the capacity, set them up to text you if you ever charge more than $200 on your debit or credit card. It’s worth the occasional “Yeah I know, I was buying an airline ticket” annoyance to catch a fraud literally within minutes of it happening.

Monday, November 7, 2005

A
jukebox musical that’s actually worth the dime–who knew? In tones
ranging from celebration to surrender, critics concede that this
bio-musical about the rise and fall of the innocuous ‘60s pop quartet
Four Seasons is a winner, at the box-office, at least. They single out
its authentic local flavor and Des McAnuff’s lively, savvy direction;
they’re more mixed about Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book, and
there’s a certain degree of condescending acknowledgement that the
show’s target audience will eat it up, flaws and all. NOTE: Most of them
praise John Lloyd Young’s lead turn as Frankie Valli; the show has
since seen more turnover than Menudo.

New York Post A

(Clive
Barnes) It’s a Broadway commonplace that the most important thing about
a musical is the book–but no one goes out singing the book, so it’s a
commonplace often forgotten. Then comes a show like Jersey Boys, with a
book, by Broadway newcomers Marshall Brickman (Woody Allen’s one-time
co-writer) and Rick Elice, that’s as tight and absorbing as an Arthur
Miller play, whipped up by director Des McAnuff into a controlled rock
frenzy. That’s when you realize just what a book can do. A glitzy,
sleight-of-hand staging never hurt, either…It’s a show still
dynamically alive in music while, as a drama, it catches the very
texture, almost the actual smell, of its time.

The Daily News A

(Howard
Kissel) I had a great time at Jersey Boys… Although a few scenes are
dramatized, much of the time the characters speak directly to the
audience. Sometimes such a technique can be deadly, but the book, by
Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, handles everything with such lightness
and finesse that you get caught up in their story. This is in no small
part due to the skill of the cast under Des McAnuff’s canny direction.
The most impressive of the group is Christian Hoff as Tommy DeVito, who
started it all.

(Adam
Feldman) With Jersey Boys, the Broadway musical has finally done right
by the jukebox, presenting the Four Seasons’ infectiously energetic
1960s tunes as they were intended to be performed. True, the script
adheres closely to the dramatic beats of a VH1 biopic: building bridges
in the first act, delving into tunnels in the second. But under Des
McAnuff’s sleek direction, the result feels canny instead of canned. And
Bob Gaudio’s music, as sung by a dynamic cast and shaped by Steve
Canyon Kennedy’s exemplary audio design, sounds as good as it ever did
(and sometimes—blasphemy!—even better).

(Jacques
Le Sourd) One big thing this show has that others of the genre don’t is
a director, Des McAnuff, who puts a really stylish gloss on it…The
other thing it has is John Lloyd Young, a singer with an astounding
voice, who effortlessly imitates Valli’s signature, a powerful
falsetto…The book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice is a little long
on narration, and you may find your eyes glazing over until the point,
two-thirds of the way through the first act, when the boys break into
television with an appearance on “American Bandstand.” From that point
on, though, you snap awake and happily ride the wave…It’s the music
that counts, and it’s sheer joy.

(Ben
Brantley) In a year in which one pop-songbook show after another has
thudded and died, “Jersey Boys” passes as silver instead of as the
chrome-plated jukebox that it is…“Jersey Boys” has the advantage of
featuring singers that actually sound like the singers they are
portraying and a technology-enhanced band that approximates the original
sound of their music…While “Jersey Boys” is based on fact, it rarely
leaps over the clichés of a regulation grit-to-glamour blueprint…Once
the Four Seasons classics are rolled out, every other pair of shoulders
in the house starts a-twitchin’.

(Linda
Winer) Why does “Jersey Boys” succeed - and it does, exuberantly - when
most jukebox musicals have been a pain in the Broadway butt? For
starters, the creators of the show about Frankie Valli and The Four
Seasons don’t just love this blue-collar DNA-pop music from the ‘60s.
Authors Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, director Des McAnuff and
choreographer Sergio Trujillo obviously also understand why they love
these dopey romantic lyrics with the simple song structures, the
gorgeous harmonic blends and the immaculate yet easygoing doo-wop
beat…Sure, this is clone theater, note-by-note coverage of songs that
combine soapy, commercial sounds with the deep-leaning pulse of a
pre-counter-cultural parallel universe in which pop groups wore suits
and skinny ties and nobody discussed Vietnam. McAnuff keeps the show
from feeling animatronic.

(Jeremy
McCarter) The show’s charm is primarily Des McAnuff’s doing. The
director has no illusions about what drives this sort of show. Jersey
Boys may aim only to be a shallow, big-budget, crowd-pleasing jukebox
musical, but it’s a model of the genre. Admire first the deftness of the
storytelling by librettists Marshall Brickman…and Rick Elice…Right
to the end, the show threatens to collapse under Behind the Music
clichés: fights over money, trouble with the missus. Yet aside from a
treacly moment here or there, the script’s unique Jersey flavor makes it
hard to resist.

(Matthew
Murray) It’s simply not possible to be angry at the frenetically
kinetic and intermittently exciting show…In fact, there’s even decent,
non-guilty enjoyment on hand here, for the first time since Mamma Mia!
ushered in the style of show with no real use for a book except to
string together pop tunes…McAnuff is the first jukebox musical
director to really realize that even audiences held captive by their
pop-song preconceptions deserve a show every bit as lively as a
completely original show with something to prove. His work here isn’t
edgy…but it is razor sharp, with McAnuff keeping a controlling grip on
the fiercely frantic nature he allows the show.

(David
Rooney) Call it what you will–bio tuner, jukebox musical, songbook
show–“Jersey Boys” is unlikely to erase the critical and industry
skepticism toward the compilation genre…But this agreeably modest show
has a number of appealing factors on its side. The underdog story of
four blue-collar Italian boys from Jersey who become a chart-topping hit
factory advocates all the right embraceable values for mainstream
acceptance: family, friendship, loyalty and a grounded awareness of
one’s roots. It celebrates the rise to stardom while providing
down-to-earth, bittersweet acknowledgement of its casualties. But most
of all, it showcases an energizing concert of toe-tapping pop classics,
with a quartet of vocally accomplished charmers faithfully reproducing
the original Four Seasons sound.

(John
Lahr) This is direct, pedal-to-the-metal stuff, without nuance, irony,
or wit—the sound, as the show insists, of the working people. Marshall
Brickman and Rick Elice have written a clever book, which should become
the template for this kind of musical excavation; it sets up the songs
with well-judged humor and the elegant strokes of observation that the
Four Seasons’ repertoire lacks…“Jersey Boys” knows exactly what it is:
a money tree. The audience is tickled to death, but, given enough of
these ersatz events, Broadway musical theatre may be, too.

(David
Finkle) So what if the Des McAnuff production is so slick that you
could slip on it and slide to an untimely end? Fuhgeddaboudit! It’s got
the Four Seasons songs, an astonishing string of melodic and
melodramatic celebrations of adolescent emotion that make this show a
highly appealing oldies concert. It pushes its broad-shouldered way into
the theater as a better example of the currently ubiquitous “jukebox
musical” form…Despite its flaws, you can’t beat this show with a
stick.

(Elysa
Gardner) Flawed but unexpectedly winning…Boys’ real secret weapon is
its stars. John Lloyd Young’s sweetly guileless Valli does indeed sing
like an angel, as another character notes. And he and the actors cast as
his bandmates perform the Four Seasons’ hits with more prowess and
charisma than I’ve yet seen in a faux-rock musical. When these guys
re-enact an Ed Sullivan TV spot, you understand why those girls in the
audience screamed…I can hope that these performers will move on to
roles that serve their talents and those of others in more unique,
challenging and career-enhancing ways. But I’m not holding my breath.

Associated Press B

(Michael
Kuchwara) When it sings and moves, this musical biography of pop icons
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons…really rocks…Only when it
attempts to tell the story of the lads’ rise to fame and fortune does
Jersey Boys occasionally falter, sinking into a soapy resume of their
lives.

(Michael
Feingold) Even at 13, I knew that what you piled up on the 45 spindle
for sock hops wasn’t the same as what you went to hear in the
theater…We’ve seen it all before, and Des McAnuff’s production, with
most of its numbers delivered by the four stand-ins lined up downstage
concertizing, doesn’t make it seem any more exciting than the last 86
times around. The four good actors who play the roles are so non-Italian
American-looking that they might as well be doing Forever Plaid…For
those who crave a wallow in the nostalgia at the end of the tunnel,
Jersey Boys does no harm; it’s a painless, if low-octane, evening.

(Terry
Teachout) Contrary to anything you’ve read elsewhere, it’s nothing more
than 32 songs performed on a cheap-looking set by a high-priced lounge
band, strung together like dimestore pearls on the most vapid of
all-tell-no-show books…No doubt I’m the wrong person to review this
show, seeing as how the hyped-up falsetto yelps of Mr. Valli
(convincingly simulated here by John Lloyd Young) give me hi-yie-yives.
All I can say is that it would be a lot simpler for everyone involved if
they’d just move the whole thing to Newark.

Lord Jesus, you have chosen Your priests from among us and sent them out to proclaim Your word and act in Your name.
For so great a gift to Your Church, we give You praise and thanksgiving, we ask You to fill them with the fire of Your love, that their ministry may reveal Your presence in the Church.
Since they are earthen vessels, we pray that Your power shine out through their weakness.
In their afflictions let them never be crushed; in their doubts, never despair; in temptation, never be destroyed; in persecution, never abandoned.
Inspire them through prayer to live each day the mystery of Your dying and rising.
In times of weakness, send Your Spirit and help them to praise Your Heavenly Father and pray for the poor sinners.
By the same Holy Spirit put Your word on their lips and Your love in their hearts, to bring good news to the poor and healing to the broken-hearted.
And may the gift of Mary, Your Mother, to the disciple whom You loved, be Your gift to every priest. Grant that she who formed You in her human image, may form them in Your Divine Image, by the power of Your Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

“Liam, you’re very underrated. I want you to know I really appreciate you. Don’t nobody else appreciate you, but I appreciate you. Now, you’re my favorite. You keep everything live and new and sporadic. Liam, dude, you’re great. You are great. You stay just the way you are.”

Taylor Swift is a spoiled, cunt. For you to still be a fan of hers after the way she treats all of her fans amazes me. You can look at all the pictures of her hugging fans and all that shit but in reality that's what the media shows her as. Taylor was wrong to ever fight with Nicki about a racial topic, Taylor has no clue what it is like to be black. To live black. She's an ignorant white bitch.

I have never seen Taylor treat a fan badly. This is someone who goes above and beyond for everyone. She praises, encourages, invites them to her home, donates to their causes, provides shelter, asks for feedback, tries to deliver to what the fans want. I’ve been a fan of her for over nine years and trust me, i’m quick to drop people who disappoint me (re: Demi Lovato)

Taylor didn’t question Nicki’s racial issues, she replied to a tweet that was DIRECTED TO TAYLOR(Anyone who denies this is simply ignorant, beyonce and taylor we’re the only two females in the category so take a wild guess) which in itself is completely uncalled for. It’s not her fault she got nominated. She didn’t nominate herself. Bad Blood broke Anaconda’s record. It hasn’t left the charts since May.

So why the hell is she mad about the people in Bad Blood being slim? For someone who is crying discrimination left and right, she’s being pretty hypocritical. Correct me if i’m wrong but in Anaconda doesn’t she say “Fuck them skinny bitches?”

How the fuck are you going to respond to your “friend” who just told you she loved you and you replied, “I love you just as much,” and then turn around and favorite tweets calling her a cunt?

Nicki is seriously sitting here mad as hell because she has three nominations and not four? While three other people of color are in the category that she’s not. That’s racism?

Also, why the hell did she bring up the whole spotify/tidal issue? Bitch was reaching at that point. Taylor removed her music, yes, and she caught a windstorm of hate for it. She’s also not the one charging $19.99 a month to listen to her damn music. (Lets also remember that she blocked fans that said they couldn’t afford Tidal, hmm, how is that for treating fans poorly?)

So while Taylor may be white and not fully educated on racial issues, she’s not ignorant. She defended herself when she felt attacked and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nicki isn’t anyone she should be scared of.

Also, has anyone just stopped for a second to think that Anaconda just really wasn’t that good of a video or song?

So quick overview:

Nicki is upset about nominations, tweets MTV several times. Nicki proceeds to say that she isn’t nominated because her video isn’t promoting slim girls, we can confirm this is false because Beyonce is nominated and she has a similar body to Nicki’s. Nicki then states that it’s a race issue, we can confirm this is also false because 3/5 nominations are people of color. Nicki then gets upset because she thinks that Taylor didn’t receive hate when she removed her music from streaming services, yet Tidal flopped and she doesn’t understand why. Just like we don’t understand why she even brought that up.

but why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that the maine is doing a 100% free tour????? they are literally PAYING FOR THE FANS TO SEE THEM LIVE especially those who couldn’t aford a concert ticket and also this is a way of them thanking their fans for all the support!!!!!!! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!! THEY ARE PAYING FOR GAS, STAFF, EQUIPMENT AND EVERYTHING!!!! WHY ISN’T THIS SPLASHED ALL OVER THE NEWS???? I WANT EVERYONE TO SEE THIS AND PRAISE THEM AND HUG THEM AND ALSO GIVE THEM AN AWARD FOR BEING THE GREATEST FUCKING BAND EVER!!!!

Ottawa: Before we begin this emergency group text about the Polar Vortex. Everyone, let it out. You know what I’m talking about. Just get it over with so we can have a serious conversation. I’m giving you a full minute.

Weight - About 116 pounds, she has very good muscle definition, a softly defined abs.

Body - She is slender in form, hips a little wider set with a b-cup chest. This really matters little to her, however.

Eyes - Impossibly pale blue in color.

Hair - When down, it falls to just a bit below the shoulder blades, but she prefers to wear it up and into a side ponytail or braid for easier keeping. Her hair is dark brown in color, seeming to fade to black in certain lights.

Skin - Almost coal in color - Anja often says that if it weren’t for her good sight, Navia would become lost in the dark. She tribal tattoos running down her back and sides, tribal swirlings with little star speckles.

Clothing - She tends towards wearing loose clothing that will cover her body.

Aura: Gray in color, not very exaggerated and seems to fade to nothing.

Semblance:Yami no Aibu (The Caress of Darkness) - when activating her semblance, Navia is capable of fading away into any shadow available for use. She can use these shadows to transport to another one that is nearby (she cannot currently go further than twenty or so feet). If there is no shadow close enough to make use of, she can cast a glyph that shadows an area around her. Alternately, she can layer another glyph atop that which can draw others into the shadow damaging them and/or their psyche. <——this is something that will unlock later.

Weapon(s):Hoshikuzo Kiba (Stardust Fangs) - attached to her wrists and forearms are katars that fold out and back for when needed to be used or put away. Pistols are mounted alongside the blades for ranged attacks. She has very little ability to cast with dust, but her bullets do make use of a dust formula she has developed.

She also carries around with her several other simpler knifes and stiletto blades for throwing.

Despite her variety of weaponry, she is actually quite comfortable with flat hand-to-hand combat.

Additional Item of Note: Kurai Namida (Tears of the Darkness). A series of dark teardrop beads on a chain running from the top of her ear to the lobe. These are formulated out of black dust that she can use in an emergency get away (like a smoke bomb).

Skill of Note: She has a photographic memory.

Personality: She is quiet and calm. Nothing much ruffles her on the outside. However, she is an introvert and does not like being surrounded by too many people. She speaks in a deadpan unless made very upset or emotional.

Background: She was born on Mistral to a quiet town who are very traditional in their upbringing of children and ways of life. When she was born so dark and with eyes of blue, the midwives of the village deemed her as a cursed child.

She was shunned for most of her life and repeatedly told that she was cursed and unwanted, that no one would want someone like her. Nevertheless, she stayed with the village for a long time, determining that it was for the best even with the situation.

When she was twelve, she was driven away by those in the village who deemed that since she had just gotten her first blood she was capable of caring for herself. Fleeing to keep life, she wandered the country for years, learning how to fight and fend for herself. After a couple of years she worked up the courage to cross the big waters from Mistral to Atlas.

Note: She loves the night and will often be found on the roofs, enjoying the stars and the sounds of the night.